After his final attack on Shakespeare, the "Lettre de Monsieur de Voltaire a Messieurs de l'Academie francaise", Voltaire composed "Irene" as a demonstration of the supremacy of French theatre. Whereas he had previously failed to win Marie Antoinette's favour with his divertissement, "L'Hote et l'hotesse", "Irene" finally granted him a triumphant return to Paris shortly before his death. During the years 1776-1777, Voltaire continued his fight against serfdom in the Jura region through his "Supplique a M. Turgot", the "Lettre du reverend pere Polycarpe" and the "Lettre d'un benedictin de Franche-Comte", while his "Dialogue de Maxime de Madaure, entre Sophronime et Adelos" reveals a preoccupation with mortality at the close of his life.

In this classic work of intellectual history, Ernst Cassirer provides both a cogent synthesis and a penetrating analysis of one of history's greatest intellectual epochs: the Enlightenment. Arguing that there was a common foundation beneath the diverse strands of thought of this period, he shows how Enlightenment philosophers drew upon the ideas of the preceding centuries even while radically transforming them to fit the modern world. In Cassirer's view, the Enlightenment liberated philosophy from the realm of pure thought and restored it to its true place as an active and creative force through which knowledge of the world is achieved.

In a new foreword, Peter Gay considers "The Philosophy of the Enlightenment" in the context in which it was written--Germany in 1932, on the precipice of the Nazi seizure of power and one of the greatest assaults on the ideals of the Enlightenment. He also argues that Cassirer's work remains a trenchant defense against enemies of the Enlightenment in the twenty-first century.

In the Louvre museum hangs a portrait of a middle-aged man with long dark hair, a mustache, and heavy-lidded eyes, and he is dressed in the starched white collar and black coat of the typical Dutch burgher. The painting is now the iconic image of Rene Descartes, the great seventeenth-century French philosopher. And the painter of the work? The Dutch master Frans Hals--or so it was long believed, until the work was downgraded to a copy of an original. But where, then, is the authentic version located, and who painted it? Is the man in the painting--and in its original--really Descartes?

A unique combination of philosophy, biography, and art history, "The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter" investigates the remarkable individuals and circumstances behind a small portrait. Through this image--and the intersecting lives of a brilliant philosopher, a Catholic priest, and a gifted painter--Steven Nadler opens up a fascinating portal into Descartes's life and times, skillfully presenting an accessible introduction to Descartes's philosophical and scientific ideas, and an illuminating tour of the volatile political and religious environment of the Dutch Golden Age. As Nadler shows, Descartes's innovative ideas about the world, about human nature and knowledge, and about philosophy itself, stirred great controversy. Philosophical and theological critics vigorously opposed his views, and civil and ecclesiastic authorities condemned his writings. Nevertheless, Descartes's thought came to dominate the philosophical world of the period, and can rightly be called the philosophy of the seventeenth century.

Shedding light on a well-known image, "The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter" offers an engaging exploration of a celebrated philosopher's world and work."

This volume contains two works of 1777. The "Prix de la justice et de l'humanite" is a summation of Voltaire's opinions over a lifetime about the confusions and cruelties in the contemporary justice system. The "Commentaire sur l'Esprit des lois de Montesquieu" resulted from Condorcet's criticisms of Voltaire's disparaging comments about Montesquieu. At first Voltaire had regarded Montesquieu as an ally in the fight against Church-led oppression, but by 1777 he associated him with republicanism, arguing that L'Esprit des lois 'aurait du etre intitule L'Esprit republicain'.

Lancees six ans apres le "Dictionnaire philosophique", les "Questions sur l'Encyclopedie" sont un des derniers chefs-d'oeuvre de Voltaire. OEuvre alphabetique, oeuvre polemique comme le "Dictionnaire", les "Questions" offrent une richesse thematique sans equivalent et constituent un veritable condense des idees de Voltaire sur une impressionnante diversite de sujets. La nouvelle edition des "Questions" en sept volumes de la Voltaire Foundation est la premiere edition fidele au texte original a paraitre apres plus de deux siecles. Pour la premiere fois, dans cette edition critique integrale, les experts explorent a fond les relations entre les "Questions" et l'objet avoue sur lequel elles se centrent - l'"Encyclopedie" de Diderot et D'Alembert. Collaborateurs: David Adams, Christophe Cave, Nicholas Cronk, Olivier Ferret, Russell Goulbourne, Antonio Gurrado, James Hanrahan, Laurence Mace, Myrtille Mericam-Bourdet, Christiane Mervaud, Michel Mervaud, Francois Moureau, Christophe Paillard, Gillian Pink, John Renwick, Gerhardt Stenger, Claire Trevien.

The Enlightenment era saw European thinkers increasingly concerned with what it meant to be human. This collection of essays traces the concept of 'humanity' through revolutionary politics, feminist biography, portraiture, explorer narratives, libertine and orientalist fiction, the philosophy of conversation, and musicology.

Originally published in 1959. This book examines the French Enlightenment by analyzing critical thought in eighteenth-centruy France. It examines the philosophes' views on evil, free will and determinism, and human nature. This is an interesting group to look at, according to Crocker, because French Enlightenment thinkers straddled two vastly different time periods.

This book situates John Locke's philosophy of knowledge and his political theory within his engagement in British monetary debates of the 17th and 18th century. Anchored in extensive archival research, George Caffentzis offers the most expansive reading of Locke's economic thought to date, contextualizing it within the expansion of capitalist accumulation on a world scale and the universality of money as a medium of exchange. Updated with a new introduction by Paul Rekret, a new foreword by Harry Cleaver and new material by the author, Clipped Coins, Abused Words, and Civil Government continues to make a significant intervention in contemporary debates around the history of capitalism, colonialism and philosophy.

Slavoj Zizek gives us a reading of a philosophical giant that changes our way of thinking about our new posthuman era. No ordinary study of Hegel, Hegel in a Wired Brain investigates what he might have had to say about the idea of the 'wired brain' - what happens when a direct link between our mental processes and a digital machine emerges. Zizek explores the phenomenon of a wired brain effect, and what might happen when we can share our thoughts directly with others. He hones in on the key question of how it shapes our experience and status as 'free' individuals and asks what it means to be human when a machine can read our minds. With characteristic verve and enjoyment of the unexpected, Zizek connects Hegel to the world we live in now, shows why he is much more fun than anyone gives him credit for, and why the 21st century might just be Hegelian.

Humility, Pride, and Christian Virtue Theory proposes an account of humility that relies on the most radical Christian sayings about humility, especially those found in Augustine and the early monastic tradition. It argues that this was the view of humility that put Christian moral thought into decisive conflict with the best Greco-Roman moral thought. This radical Christian account of humility has been forgotten amidst contemporary efforts to clarify and retrieve the virtue of humility for secular life. Kent Dunnington shows how humility was repurposed during the early-modern era-particularly in the thought of Hobbes, Hume, and Kant-to better serve the economic and social needs of the emerging modern state. This repurposed humility insisted on a role for proper pride alongside humility, as a necessary constituent of self-esteem and a necessary motive of consistent moral action over time. Contemporary philosophical accounts of humility continue this emphasis on proper pride as a counterbalance to humility. By contrast, radical Christian humility proscribes pride altogether. Dunnington demonstrates how such a radical view need not give rise to vices of humility such as servility and pusillanimity, nor need such a view fall prey to feminist critiques of humility. But the view of humility set forth makes little sense abstracted from a specific set of doctrinal commitments peculiar to Christianity. This study argues that this is a strength rather than a weakness of the account since it displays how Christianity matters for the shape of the moral life.

A lively examination of the life and work of one of the great Enlightenment intellectuals Philosopher, translator, novelist, art critic, and editor of the Encyclopedie, Denis Diderot was one of the liveliest figures of the Enlightenment. But how might we delineate the contours of his diverse oeuvre, which, unlike the works of his contemporaries, Voltaire, Rousseau, Schiller, Kant, or Hume, is clearly characterized by a centrifugal dynamic? Taking Hegel's fascinated irritation with Diderot's work as a starting point, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht explores the question of this extraordinary intellectual's place in the legacy of the eighteenth century. While Diderot shared most of the concerns typically attributed to his time, the ways in which he coped with them do not fully correspond to what we consider Enlightenment thought. Conjuring scenes from Diderot's by turns turbulent and quiet life, offering close readings of several key books, and probing the motif of a tension between physical perception and conceptual experience, Gumbrecht demonstrates how Diderot belonged to a vivid intellectual periphery that included protagonists such as Lichtenberg, Goya, and Mozart. With this provocative and elegant work, he elaborates the existential preoccupations of this periphery, revealing the way they speak to us today.

Throughout his writings, and particularly in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Kant alludes to the idea that evil is connected to self-deceit, and while numerous commentators regard this as a highly attractive thesis, none have seriously explored it. Laura Papish's Kant on Evil, Self-Deception, and Moral Reform addresses this crucial element of Kant's ethical theory. Working with both Kant's core texts on ethics and materials less often cited within scholarship on Kant's practical philosophy (such as Kant's logic lectures), Papish explores the cognitive dimensions of Kant's accounts of evil and moral reform while engaging the most influential - and often scathing - of Kant's critics. Her book asks what self-deception is for Kant, why and how it is connected to evil, and how we achieve the self-knowledge that should take the place of self-deceit. She offers novel defenses of Kant's widely dismissed claims that evil is motivated by self-love and that an evil is rooted universally in human nature, and she develops original arguments concerning how social institutions and interpersonal relationships facilitate, for Kant, the self-knowledge that is essential to moral reform. In developing and defending Kant's understanding of evil, moral reform, and their cognitive underpinnings, Papish not only makes an important contribution to Kant scholarship. Kant on Evil, Self-Deception, and Moral Reform also reveals how much contemporary moral philosophers, philosophers of religion, and general readers interested in the phenomenon of evil stand to gain by taking seriously Kant's views.

A perceptive introduction to the mind of one of German's greatest writers, in a new translation for the first time in 150 years 'The best German book there is' Nietzsche By the turn of the nineteenth century, the poet, novelist and thinker Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was one of the most famous people in the world. In 1823 he became friend and mentor to the young writer Johann Eckermann, who, for the last nine years of Goethe's life, recorded their wide-ranging conversations on art, literature, science and philosophy. This rich portrait of Germany's literary elder statesman, now in its first new translation for over 150 years, gives a fascinating glimpse into a great mind as well as 'many insights and invaluable lessons about life.' Translated by Allan Blunden with an Introduction by Ritchie Robertson

This collection of reading and essays on the Standard of Taste offers a much needed resource for students and scholars of philosophical aesthetics, political reflection, value and judgments, economics, and art. The authors include experts in the philosophy of art, aesthetics, history of philosophy as well as the history of science. This much needed volume on David Hume will enrich scholars across all levels of university study and research.

Reason and Experience in Mendelssohn and Kant provides the first in-depth examination of the lifelong intellectual relationship between two of the greatest figures of the European Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786). Both were engaged in a common project of striking the right balance between rationalism and empiricism. They sometimes borrowed from one another, often disagreed with one another, and can usefully be compared even when they did not directly interact. Guyer examines a series of comparisons and contrasts: their arguments and conclusions on a range of metaphysical issues, including proofs of the existence of God, immortality, and idealism; their shared interests in aesthetics; and their path-breaking work on the "religion of reason" and the separation of church and state. Setting the work of both philosophers in historical context, Guyer shows that, where Kant sometimes provides deeper insight into the underlying structure of human thought, Mendelssohn is often the deeper student of the variety of human experience. This is evident above all in their treatments of aesthetics and religion: Mendelssohn recognizes more deeply than Kant the emotional impact of art, and while Kant imagines that organized religion will one day be superseded by pure morality, Mendelssohn argued that organized religion in all its varieties seems here to stay, and so toleration for religious variety is an inescapable requirement of human morality. Based on an exhaustive study of a wide range of texts, this study demonstrates the on-going relevance of Kant and Mendelssohn to modern thought.

Our reasoning evolved not for finding the truth, but for social bonding and convincing. The best logical methods humans have created provide no path to truth, unless something is assumed as true from the start. Other than that, we only have methods for attempting to measure uncertainty. This book highlights the consequences of these facts for scientific practice, and suggests how to correct the mistakes we still make. But even our best methods to measure uncertainty might require infinite resources to provide solid answers. This conclusion has important consequences for when and how much we can trust arguments and scientific results. The author suggests ways we can improve our current practices, and argues that theoretical work is a fundamental part of the most effective way to do science.

While many periods of history are popularly known by their 'great men', the Enlightenment stands out for the prominence of its 'great groups'. This volume assembles leading scholars using data-driven scholarship to study the networks that made the Enlightenment possible, and contributed to creating a new sense of European identity. From Voltaire's correspondence with Catherine the Great, to Adam Smith's travels on the European continent, mediated and unmediated communication networks were the lifeline of the Enlightenment. What is particularly notable about the Enlightenment is how these different networks were central to their participants' identity. One could not take part in the Enlightenment on one's own. Although some older historical studies highlight the importance of social networks in the Enlightenment, data-driven approaches allow for a more comprehensive and granular understanding of the many different types of networks that formed the intellectual and cultural infrastructure of the Enlightenment throughout Europe. The recent influx of metadata from the correspondences of major Enlightenment figures now allows scholars to study these networks at both the micro and macro levels, and to explore the worlds of the philosophes and the "nodes" in their networks in rich detail. It is at this intersection of Enlightenment historiography, data capture, and social network analysis that the essays collected in this volume all fall, taking advantage of new data sources, configurations, and modes of analysis to deepen our understanding of how Enlightenment sociability worked, who it included, and what it meant for participants.

A major new history of how the Enlightenment transformed people's everyday lives The Secular Enlightenment is a panoramic account of the radical ways that life began to change for ordinary people in the age of Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau. In this landmark book, familiar Enlightenment figures share places with voices that have remained largely unheard until now, from freethinkers and freemasons to French materialists, anticlerical Catholics, pantheists, pornographers, readers, and travelers. Margaret Jacob, one of our most esteemed historians of the Enlightenment, reveals how this newly secular outlook was not a wholesale rejection of Christianity but rather a new mental space in which to encounter the world on its own terms. She takes readers from London and Amsterdam to Berlin, Vienna, Turin, and Naples, drawing on rare archival materials to show how ideas central to the emergence of secular democracy touched all facets of daily life. Human frailties once attributed to sin were now viewed through the lens of the newly conceived social sciences. People entered churches not to pray but to admire the architecture, and spent their Sunday mornings reading a newspaper or even a risque book. The secular-minded pursued their own temporal and commercial well-being without concern for the life hereafter, regarding their successes as the rewards for their actions, their failures as the result of blind economic forces. A majestic work of intellectual and cultural history, The Secular Enlightenment demonstrates how secular values and pursuits took hold of eighteenth-century Europe, spilled into the American colonies, and left their lasting imprint on the Western world for generations to come.

The fifth volume of the "Corpus des notes marginales", long since out of print, was first published by Akademie-Verlag in Berlin, East Germany, in 1994. It was reissued in the OEuvres completes de Voltaire Oxford edition, where the remaining volumes of the 'Corpus' (unfinished since 1994) began to be published in 2006. This volume has been made easier to use in the reissue by the addition of running heads and by a new index of Voltaire's works cited in the notes of the present volume and the four that preceded it. This volume contains an additional piece by Nikolai Kopanev, 'V. S. Lublinski et le Corpus des notes marginales'.

This is the first book to provide a comprehensive overview of the entire career of one of Britain's greatest men of letters. It sets in biographical and historical context all of Hume's works, from A Treatise of Human Nature to The History of England, bringing to light the major influences on the course of Hume's intellectual development, and paying careful attention to the differences between the wide variety of literary genres with which Hume experimented. The major events in Hume's life are fully described, but the main focus is on Hume's intentions as a philosophical analyst of human nature, politics, commerce, English history, and religion. Careful attention is paid to Hume's intellectual relations with his contemporaries. The goal is to reveal Hume as a man intensely concerned with the realization of an ideal of open-minded, objective, rigorous, dispassionate dialogue about all the principal questions faced by his age.

Kant is widely acknowledged as the greatest philosopher of modern times. He undertook his famous critical turn to save human freedom and morality from the challenge of determinism and materialism. Intertwined with his metaphysical interests, however, he also had theological commitments, which have received insufficient attention. He believed that man is a fallen creature and in need of 'redemption'. He intended to provide a fortress protecting religious faith from the failure of rationalist metaphysics, from the atheistic strands of the Enlightenment, from the new mathematical science of nature, and from the dilemmas of Christian theology itself. Kant was an epistemologist, a philosopher of mind, a metaphysician of experience, an ethicist and a philosopher of religion. But all this was sustained by his religious faith. This book aims to recover the focal point and inner contradictions of his thought, the 'secret thorn' of his metaphysics (as Heidegger once put it). It first locates Kant in the tradition of reflection on the human weakness from Luther to Hume, and then engages in a critical, but charitable, manner with Kant's entire pre-critical work, including his posthumous fragments. Special attention is given to The Only Possible Ground (1763), one of the most difficult, interesting and underestimated of Kant's works. The present book takes its cue from an older approach to Kant, but also engages with recent Anglophone and continental scholarship, and deploys modern analytical tools to make sense of Kant. What emerges is an innovative and thought-provoking interpretation of Kant's metaphysics, set against the background of forgotten religious aspects of European philosophy.

Immanuel Kant laid the foundations of modern Western thought. Every subsequent major philosopher owes a profound debt to Kant's attempts to delimit human reason as an appropriate object of philosophical enquiry. And yet, Kant's relentless systematic formalism made him a controversial figure in the history of the philosophy that he helped to shape. Introducing Kant focuses on the three critiques of Pure Reason, Practical Reason and Judgement. It describes Kant's main formal concepts: the relation of mind to sensory experience, the question of freedom and the law and, above all, the revaluation of metaphysics. Kant emerges as a diehard rationalist yet also a Romantic, deeply committed to the power of the sublime to transform experience. The illustrated guide explores the paradoxical nature of the pre-eminent philosopher of the Enlightenment, his ideas and explains the reasons for his undiminished importance in contemporary philosophical debates.

Written by Robert Wicks, a recognised Kant specialist who teaches at the University of Auckland, Kant: A Complete Introduction is designed to give you everything you need to succeed, all in one place. It covers the key areas that students are expected to be confident in, outlining the basics in clear jargon-free English, and then providing added-value features like summaries of key books, and even lists of questions you might be asked in your seminar or exam. The book uses a structure that mirrors many university courses on Freud and psychoanalysis - explaining and contextualising Kant's theories, which have been among the most influential in Philosophy. The book starts by introducing Kant and his way of thinking and arguing, before looking at how Kant answered three key questions: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? In doing so, Professor Wicks introduces the reader to all of Kant's key work, including The Critique of Pure Reason. Teach Yourself titles employ the 'Breakthrough method', which is designed specifically to overcome problems that students face. - Problem: "I find it difficult to remember what I've read."; Solution: this book includes end-of-chapter questions and summaries, and flashcards of key points available on-line and as apps - Problem: "Most books mention important other sources, but I can never find them in time."; Solution: this book includes key texts and case studies are summarised, complete with fully referenced quotes ready to use in your essay or exam. - Problem: "Lots of introductory books turn out to cover totally different topics than my course."; Solution: this book is written by a current university lecturer who understands what students are expected to know.

Freemasonry was a major cultural and social phenomenon and a key element of the Enlightenment. It was to have an international influence across the globe. This primary resource collection charts a key period in the development of organized Freemasonry culminating in the formation of a single United Grand Lodge of England. The secrecy that has surrounded Freemasonry has made it difficult to access information and documents about the organization and its adherents in the past. This collection is the result of extensive archival research and transcription and highlights the most significant themes associated with Freemasonry. The documents are drawn from masonic collections, private archives and libraries worldwide. The majority of these texts have never before been republished. Documents include rituals (some written in code), funeral services, sermons, songs, certificates, an engraved list of lodges, letters, pamphlets, theatrical prologues and epilogues, and articles from newspapers and periodicals. This collection will enable researchers to identify many key masons for the first time. It will be of interest to students of Freemasonry, the Enlightenment and researchers in eighteenth-century studies.

Kant's 'practical philosophy' comprehends a diverse group of his writings on ethics, politics, law, religion, and the philosophy of history and culture. Kristi E. Sweet demonstrates the unity and interdependence of these writings by showing how they take as their animating principle the human desire for what Kant calls the unconditioned - understood in the context of his practical thought as human freedom. She traces the relationship between this desire for freedom and the multiple forms of finitude that confront human beings in different aspects of practical life, and stresses the interdependence of the pursuit of individual moral goodness and the formation of community through the state, religion, culture and history. This study of Kant's approach to practical life discovers that doing our duty, itself the realization of our individual freedom, requires that we set for ourselves and pursue a whole constellation of social, political and other communal ends.